


Fleeing into the Arms of the Lark

by roboticor



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roboticor/pseuds/roboticor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canonverse divergence where Eponine survives the barricade and meets with Cosette.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fleeing into the Arms of the Lark

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for violence, death, and suicidal ideation.

**————————————————————————————**

The gunpowder stings her throat and clouds her eyes and there’s blood and screaming and this is so much more than she imagined it would be. The horrors of poverty and starvation and destitution are not better, not worse, but different, so  _different_  from the horrors of gunfire and overturned furniture and cannons.

She is unprepared.

Unprepared, but not helpless. She will never be helpless, not until her dying breath.

She is as fierce as any of the men of the barricade, reloading guns and climbing the piles of chairs to give them to groping hands and carrying wounded men, their cries ringing in her ears.

She came here to die at his side, but she does not intend to be useless until that moment. To stand at the top of the barricade and call for death is not her way.

Then suddenly the national guardsmen are scaling the barricade. They are shoving their bayonets deep within the bellies of shrieking boys. They are wiping blood from their brows as it streams into their eyes and they are breaching the barricade. It will soon fall. She will soon fall. She hears someone cry out for God and wonders if she should pray.

 

There is a gun barrel aiming at her chest. She takes a deep breath. Nowhere to run. No time to run. No reason to weep. This is it. She will die. Marius will die. Their bodies will finally intertwine in the mass grave they dig for the insurrectionists.

She almost enjoys this thought when he stumbles into her view. Into the view of the national guardsman focused on her. He is closer. More of a threat. The gun swings around to aim at him instead.

The crack of his rifle is louder than the entire battle. Her eyes widen as Marius’ limp body crumples. This is what she wanted. Her next, she prays.

**————————————————————————————**

Her prayers do not come true.

She runs when the other rebels run. They retreat inside; she sneaks over the barricade, losing her hat so that her hair streams loosely behind her.

She sprints, dodges. They make feeble attempts to shoot her down, but their focus is on pushing forward. She does not give up her life easily, but perhaps she fights to live too hard, because she makes it safely to an alley and ducks away.

She is still alive.

No.

_No._

She clutches at her breast, feels her heart still beating, her chest still expanding with her breath.

This was not how it was supposed to be.

**————————————————————————————**

She is at the apartment that the letter described, aching and mourning. A furious fire burns in her stomach, mixing with the constant throb of hunger. Everything is blurry and she can feel her head spinning.

She came here to tell the girl of Marius’ fate.

She came here to share her grief.

She came here because she doesn’t know where else to go.

She knocks at the door. She bangs, then. She begs.

Finally it opens a crack.

Her sweet face peers out. Her eyes go wide and she swings the door open, wordlessly welcoming Eponine and helping her inside.

She immediately sets her down and runs off, returning with a rag. She dabs at Eponine’s neck—an open wound that Eponine had been too dazed to notice.

Eponine stutters out some nonsense words, trying to sort out the chaos of her addled mind. Cosette shooshes her and purses her lips in concentration.

Eponine can feel her blood seeping out of the gash now that she has been made aware of it and she leans back in the seat in which she has been placed, fretfully drifting off into darkness.

**————————————————————————————————————**

She wakes to see Cosette wiping blood from her hands onto the rag. She tucks a needle and thread into a small kit at her side and looks at Eponine sadly. Eponine reaches up to where it hurts and feels the rudimentary stitching holding her skin closed over the wound. She whimpers a little as her fingers brush against it.

“Don’t touch, you’ll only tear them open,” Cosette says softly but firmly.

“Marius is dead,” Eponine responds.

A moment of stunned silence, and then Cosette is crying. Eponine stares at her. She supposes she should be crying as well; she has lost him, too. But she cannot. She feels like she is in pieces, she feels that she is falling apart. But she cannot cry.

Cosette puts her hands on Eponine’s and chokes out between sobs “Thank you for risking your life to tell me.”

Eponine scrunches her face in confusion. The Lark thinks she’s come here for her.

Well, what else has she come here for?

She stays quiet, leans back, and closes her eyes again. Cosette cries quietly to herself until Eponine falls asleep again.

**————————————————————————————**

Eponine rests on the couch and watches Cosette clean up, rubbing furiously at the bloodied rag over a pail of water until her hands are red raw to match the rings around her eyes. She wonders if she recognizes her. She wonders if she’d hate her if she did. Eponine is not oblivious to the torture she put the Lark through when they were children.

“I’m Eponine,” she comes out with while Cosette’s back is turned to her, placing the sewing kit she used to improvise back in a packed trunk.

“I know. I remember.” Cosette says in the same soft voice she has been using since Eponine came in here. It is soothing and gentle and kind and nothing that Eponine wants right now.

She bites her lip, peeling at the chapped skin and taking it into her mouth, tasting blood. She remembers. She remembers each time she had told her mother to beat Cosette for taking her toys, even when Cosette had not gone near them. She remembers each time she and Azelma had made a mess to add to her endless chore list. She remembers each time she had looked on the freezing, starving Lark and laughed.

She remembers each misery Eponine added to her lot, and still she takes her in and treats her with compassion.

Eponine finally finds the capacity to weep. 

**————————————————————————————**

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to athelstanned, brotherathelstan, and throughtosunrise on tumblr.
> 
>  
> 
> Criticism welcome and encouraged!


End file.
